Gulveer, Nur Hasan and Priti make cut for Asian Championships

National Games champion Gulveer Singh helped a bunch of 11 runners achieve the Asian Championship qualification time as he comfortably won the men’s 10,000m title in the 26th National Federation Cup athletics championships at the Birsa Munda Stadium in Ranchi on Monday.

RANCHI: National Games champion Gulveer Singh helped a bunch of 11 runners achieve the Asian Championship qualification time as he comfortably won the men’s 10,000m title in the 26 th National Federation Cup athletics championships at the Birsa Munda Stadium here on Monday.

However, the 24-year-old from UP and his second-placed Statemate Abhishek Pal were slower than their personal best. And though there’s a crowd making the Asian championship entry standard, only two can go to Thailand for the event in July.

Maharashtra’s Sanjivani Jadhav, the women’s 10,000m winner, had no such luck missing the Asian standard by 33s.

There were just five finals on the championships’ opening day but there was plenty of action in other events. There was some disappointment too with Amoj Jacob, the country’s fastest male quartermiler for the third straight year, pulling up during the heats in the morning.

“Nothing to worry, he felt some pain during the event. He wanted to be cautious and stopped,” Radhakrishnan Nair, the chief National coach, told The Hindu.

Later in the evening, Tamil Nadu’s Rajesh Ramesh joined Amoj Jacob as the fastest Indian quartermiler this year after topping the semifinal heats with 46.13s. National record holder Muhammed Anas, who has now left the national camp and is now training under his old coach P.B. Jaikumar in Thiruvananthapuram, was the next best with 46.27s.

And in the women’s 400m, Aishwarya Mishra moved to the top of this year’s India list while emerging as the fastest qualifier to the final in 52.85s. She also achieved the AFI’s Asian meet’s qualifying standard (53.54) along with R. Vithya (53.32) and Priya Mohan (53.49).